D&D General Is DnD being mothballed?

[Scribe]

Small tangent, apologies in advance:

The issue with that, though, is the subjectivity of what constitutes “good art,” or even, “art which inspires me.” Speaking solely for myself, while I recognize that there is a lot of technical proficiency and talent in 5e art, the majority of what I have seen of it has left me cold. It doesn’t inspire me, but distracts. Something about the art direction just doesn’t work for me at all.

Totally fair, but if someone responds to 'is the art import' with 'very' or '5' or whatever, over and over, and so do others, then Wizards should understand (and I would argue they do after looking at Planescape's previews) that the art is an important piece, and we dont need them to cut corners like they have in some books.

 

[deganawida]

Totally fair, but if someone responds to 'is the art import' with 'very' or '5' or whatever, over and over, and so do others, then Wizards should understand (and I would argue they do after looking at Planescape's previews) that the art is an important piece, and we dont need them to cut corners like they have in some books.

Absolutely agree with that.

 

[Kurotowa]

Man alive, do I ever wish they'd get back into novels. Now there's an area where D&D's slowed down to the point of being mothballed! (Yes, I know there are a few coming out here and there, but it's just not the same.)

It's a half formed thought, but haven't livestreamers taken over the "stories of the worlds of D&D" ecological niche? I had a shelf full of the novels, and they always had a highly tenuous relationship to the rules of D&D. People quibble over the DM habits on Critical Role or Dimension 20 but at least they're playing the game.

Livestreams are the next step up from Actual Play stories, and those are usually both more fun and a better representation of the game than the novels. If I want fantasy novels of dubious quality, those are still easily had. It's even pretty easy to pick out the ones that were obviously inspired by someone's home D&D game. Things like class roles or studded leather armor are a dead giveaway.

 

[Maxperson]

No. It is failing to serve you. Why do you presume to speak for “lots of other players”?

I'm not. I've been seeing them ask for the same thing for years. They spoke for themselves.

And I’ve no need to prove anything. Seven 3e books wasn’t bloat? Really. Seven “Complete” class books.

Then you are arguing that beyond the core 3 books nothing should ever be made, because bloat. So yes, you do need to prove your unsubstantiated claim. You've made a claim of fact without backing it up. That's poor arguing.

Poof bloat. Poorly balanced for the most part bloat.

No. Those were not bloat. Some of it was poorly made and much of it was excellent, but poorly made does not equate to bloat, nor does it equate to happening because too much stuff has been released.

Since you have no problem with 3e levels of poor balance and play testing, why do you have problems with Dms Guild?

3e was a bit too overbalanced for me. Not enough to ruin the edition and it's still my favorite, but it could have used a bit of scaling back. As for DM's guild, much if it is even worse. What is good is usually only a few pages long and I'm simply not going to buy 30 books after having slogged through 300, when 1 book by WotC would be sufficient to give me the same stuff and almost surely be better balanced.

 

[MGibster]

I kind of miss the days when tons of splat books were released. Some of them were terrible, I still have nightmares about the Bladesinger kit, but a lot of the books were full of great material. I've not really bought a whole lot of 5th edition D&D books over the course of the last 9 years. I have the three core books, a few campaigns, Eberron, and Xanathar's. That's it. The main reason I've bought so few books is because so little of what they produce actually interests me. Hell, two of the campaigns I've bought are still in shrink wrap. I don't expect WotC to cater to my every need or want, though it would be nice, so I don't hold this against them.

Would I purchase a bunch of splat books if they printed more? I'm thinking probably not. Sometimes what the consumer says they want isn't the same as what the consumer will spend money on. FFG had a ton of splat books for their Star Wars line and I didn't buy a single one. So good for WotC for putting out a limited number of products over the years. I wish they'd do a better job with their setting material, but it appears they're making the right business decision by limiting their production schedule.

 

[bedir than]

That was not my understanding:



Now, admittedly that article is a year old, but I don't think D&D is pulling in quadruple what it did at this time last year.

https://investor.hasbro.com/news-releases/news-release-details/hasbro-reports-second-quarter-2023-financial-results

And

https://investor.hasbro.com/static-files/18fce6ae-107c-4c55-81e4-0ccb3b3a6af0

lots of math and some tl'dr shows over 100 mill for D&D the game last quarter as it was up 77% versus a year ago

 

[Mercurius]

I'm all for WotC running D&D as a business. A well run business stays in business. TSR went bankrupt and got bought out, and we're fantastically lucky that they were bought by WotC who cared about the game. These days they'd get snatched up by some terrible venture capital investment firm that would chop up D&D for parts. So I entirely support making smart business choices so WotC can keep making D&D.

This one hits close to home for me because I grew up the child of two science fiction authors. Published authors, award winning authors. I also grew up very poor, because my father subscribed to that binary between art and business, and was adamant about choosing art every time. He burned his bridges and stopped getting contracts and then there were no more novels. Refusing to compromise between art and business meant no more art and no more business.

The other extreme is bad too, of course. Soulless money grabs are just as harmful to both art and business in the long run. But lionizing art over business is just a good way to go out of business. A balance needs to be struck.

Good point. I tend to be (or err) more like your dad, though recognize that it has, well, practical problems.

But as you and others have pointed out, it isn't a binary, either all business ("the bottom line above all else") or all art ("never sell out, man"). The trick is finding the right balance.

 

[Sparky McDibben]

I was under the impression that the Laffer Curve specifically applied to tax revenue (higher taxes act as a damper on economic activity because people don't see as much benefit, and/or are more likely to use various means of avoiding taxation, and these factors can lead to a higher tax rate actually reducing revenue). But people who talk about the Laffer Curve regarding taxes often seem to fall victim to the same fallacy as we have seen here: just because there are some cases where lowering taxes leads to more tax revenue that doesn't make it a universal truth (and that's probably as close to politics as the board rules will let me go). Similarly, just because there are some production schedules that could be dialed back and you'd still make more money, that doesn't mean that that's true for all production schedules.

Arthur Laffer's initial demonstration was in regards to tax revenue, 'tis true, but the same principle can be applied across multiple lines of business. As you note, the trick is figuring out where you are on the curve. Are you at the peak? Then changing production at all will reduce revenue. Are you on the left side? Then you need to ramp up. Often, the only way to know is to change something and see what happens over the next six months, and hope that there are no one-off impacts that will screw up your experiment.

 

[Dire Bare]

I feel like there's both a false dichotomy and a questionable premise here.

The false dichotomy is between an extremely slow release schedule, which is primarily the result of limited manpower and resources (WotC literally couldn't put out more books without significantly upstaffing the D&D team or using a ton more contractors), and the "TSR firehose".

It's not one or the other, is it? That's a huge middle ground between the two. You could double the number of D&D books per year and still be nowhere near the "TSR firehose", and indeed, but far, far below WotC's own "firehose" of 3.XE. Especially if we accounted for the fact that WotC used to have other RPGs than D&D, like Star Wars RPG.

Premise-wise:

That's pure [CITATION NEEDED] territory.

It's a totally valid opinion. No can say that's a completely unreasonable belief. But it's not a fact that's supported by any evidence we're aware of. AFAIK, it's just an unsupported but potentially-true belief. It's equally possible, I'd suggest, that it's had absolutely nothing to do with D&D's success, and that D&D might even have been at least more financially successful with more books.

No, no citation needed. Yes, it's my opinion. One I'm very comfortable with, paying attention to WotC's words and actions over the past couple of decades.

Who said WotC's D&D release schedule was either slow or fast, with nothing in between? Not me. They started very slow, much slower than TSR, much slower than their own release schedules for 3E and 4E, due to very valid reasons. And it worked, it worked very well. Could they have started with a somewhat faster release schedule back in 2014 and enjoyed just as much, if not more, success? Sure. But without access to an alternate reality machine, we'll never really know.

WotC is currently experimenting with increasing their releases and with the type of releases. Have they found the perfect D&D release schedule pace yet? The perfect mix of products? Probably not, but that's why they are experimenting. WotC is far from perfect, but I trust their data-driven decision making more than the armchair quarterbacking from the fan community.

 

[Mercurius]

that clearly is the goal, whether they are… they increased the releases slightly, they are still trying to figure that out themselves

I don’t think they are very far off however, ie 12 books is too much, 7 or 8 might already be, 6 however, that at least is not clear (and to me even less than to WotC)

I have said before that, using their current formatting -- of only substantial hardcovers and box sets -- I think six major products a year (plus 1 or 2 extras, like starter sets and non-game books) or one every two months, is the sweet-spot. It is enough to make chronic buyers happy-ish, but not too much to turn off the glut-averse and, I think, won't overburden the catalog too much.

And it would still be well below half the 3.5/4E output.